Civil Liberties

French Court Orders Twitter Disclose Name of Racist Tweeter

Started after anti-Semitic hashtag trended on Twitter in France

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Twitter appears to have lost a battle against revealing the details of users who post racist or offensive tweets.

The drama started last October, after the anti-Semitic hashtag #UnBonJuif (a good Jew) made its way into the trending topics of Twitter in France. The Association of Jewish Students in France (UEJF) began legal action against the site, asking a Paris court to force Twitter to reveal details of accounts that used the hashtag in order that legal action could be taken. The UEJF also called for Twitter to roll out a more efficient notification system for users to report illegal content or hate speech so it can be removed from the site. Twitter however has previously claimed to be bound only by US laws, rather than local ones, and would only reveal users' details if a US court ordered it to do so.